


differently underwater, differently now

by aeridi0nis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Crying, Full Moons, James Potter - Freeform, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Peter Pettigrew - Freeform, Severus Snape - Freeform, The Marauders - Freeform, The Prank, Werewolf, Werewolves, marauder era, marauders at school, remus crying, sirius crying, wolfstar, wolfstar angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeridi0nis/pseuds/aeridi0nis
Summary: ‘There’s a heartbeat, a pulse, a steady hot thrum of blood that rushes in his ears. There’s silence between them, but he can’t hear it over the rhythm. He’s staring at Remus, isn’t he? The thumping is too loud, he can’t see him. His pulse or the corpse’s? The after or the before? It’s not dead, it’s not dead, it’s not dead.’***Sirius tries talking to Remus after The Prank. Remus finally agrees to listen. It’s Remus, however, who ends up doing the talking. It’s Sirius, however, who needs to start listening.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	differently underwater, differently now

**Author's Note:**

> no! dig up that dead horse! i want a turn flogging it too!
> 
> referring to how many people, all of whom are far better than I, have written their take on the prank. you’d think that’d stop me posting this, but it hasn’t! so here you go! enjoy, idk, I don’t know if there’s much to enjoy

_ ’Won’t we be quite the pair? You with your bad heart, me with my bad head. Together, though, we might have something worthwhile.’   
  
_

It’s like being underwater, he thinks. 

Right at the bottom of the Great Lake, amongst the mud and the weeds and the dirty, forgotten things, sitting cross-legged and gazing through the water at all the other people, who are all swimming. None of them drift down to the bottom to join him, they all stay afloat, but he can see them, and he watches. He watches the entire world swimming above him, limbs and voices and faces and the days and the nights and the hours, minutes, seconds. All inconsequential. It moves around him with such a ruthless indifference that it might as well not move at all, but it does; drags him by his shoulders through the mud, forces him to splutter out an air bubble every time he thinks he’s run out.  _You can’t stay here,_ the water whispers.  _We aren’t finished with you._ Time passes differently underwater. Time passes differently now.

It’s funny how everything’s sorted in two piles, now – really, his life has never been simpler - there’s  _before_ and then there’s  _after._ That night has become a great big fucking concrete wall dividing his life and he can pummel on the stone until his fists are bloody but there’s nothing for it. Sirius tries not to remember that everything, every second of the rest of his life will always be  _after_. He still clings on to  _before_ like it’s not a dead thing. There’s no one there to pry him away from its corpse. This can’t be it, he thinks, gripping the corpse’s hand, checking its pulse. It’s been months now, but this can’t be it. He has no reason to believe it’ll change except for the fact that he might very well lose himself if it doesn’t, but no ones letting him drown yet and that’s sign enough.

Yeah, that works. Like being underwater. Remus breaking up with him has been like being underwater. He’s had time to think about it, after all.

It all would’ve been bad enough if it was just Remus who wouldn’t look at him, but it’s not: it’s James and it’s Peter, torn between the two and they’ve opted to cut him out as well. Shamefully, ridiculously, he’s angry about this. He hasn’t got a fucking leg to stand on, but he is, and every time he sees them go quiet as he walks into a room he wants to scream ‘ _Do you have a fucking problem?’_

But the answer is yes, they do, and it’s an argument he’s already lost.

‘ _Yes, you tried to use our friend to murder someone and now his life is a living hell.’_

There’s nothing for it. He endures his punishment, his sentence: the long, drawn out silences and the guilty looks directed towards the floor and the one word answers he gets when he’s forced to ask strictly-necessary-questions such as ‘You done in the bathroom?’

Sharing a dorm complicates things, a cruel twist. If the events of the day after That Night were a punch to the stomach, having to share a dorm with the three of them that night and every subsequent night is like a kick to the side when he’s already on the floor.

He’s been serving detention six times a week since it happened, seven-thirty to nine-thirty in the evening. He doesn’t care much, didn’t even when they’d first given it to him, taken him off the Quidditch team, off the Hogsmeade trips. He fell into a pattern, it just became a thing he had to do. Another class on his timetable. It’s deliberately unclear when they’ll make him stop, so he’s in a sort of limbo, but he’s been in limbo all this time anyway, for far more important reasons. He’d be underwater either way.

Sirius reckons he’s done it all now; they’ve thought up detentions for him in the recent weeks that he’d never been subjected to even after six years of regular punishments with James for Merlin-knows-what. They used to take special pride in beating last year’s number. Well, Sirius’ll definitely manage that this year.

Tonight saw him scraping chewing gum from the bottom of the desks in Mcgonagall’s Transfiguration classroom. It’s difficult work, no magic allowed: he has to lay under the desks on his back and keep his arms up to scrape, and it makes them ache terribly. Plus, a lot of the chewing gum is the same colour – periwinkle, Sirius knows the brand (and so would you, if you’d stuffed Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum into as many keyholes as James and Sirius have) – and it’s all fresh and revoltingly slick with saliva. Sirius reckons Filch chewed half of it up himself and stuck it there before he arrived, but he doesn’t say a word. It’s not expulsion. He must bite his tongue and be grateful.

He’s learning to keep his mouth shut more often. He received his first lesson, self-inflicted, the hard way.

When he arrives back at the Gryffindor common room, it’s usually empty, and he can sit on the sofa for a while and prod the dying embers of fire until he works up the nerve to go up to his dormitory, where they’re all sleeping, or worse, talking. It’s the worst when they’re still awake, the heaviness of the silence that descends makes him want to bust a window and throw himself through it. He’s a pathetic Gryffindor, really. It’d be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s not. Sirius has fallen asleep down there in the common room before, right there on the sofa, woken up to second-year girls staring and giggling at him and dawn breaking. He says unkind things to the girls, and storms off. He’s become a rather unkind person, or perhaps he’s always been one and now there’s no humour to take the edge off of it. He’s not surrounded by good people anymore. 

It isn’t empty tonight. In fact, there’s only one other occupant sitting in an armchair by the lit fire, but it is completely and entirely  _full_ as far as Sirius is concerned, crowded even, and he freezes as soon as he enters. Barely needs to look to know who it is. It’s odd, that – the way he always knows it’s him. Like the air is different or something, the way it hums right after someone casts a spell. Alive. Static. Does he turn around? Go and sleep in an alcove somewhere? Does he duck his head and walk past him as if he’s not there? That’s what Remus would’ve done to him. He’s been avoiding him, Sirius knows it. But even after these months there’s no one to drag Sirius away from the corpse of  _before_ and he’s been holding its hand all this time because he refuses to believe there’s no pulse and if he could just breathe a little life into it the way the dying embers in the fire glow brighter when he blows on them and alright he’s opening his mouth now because Remus is alone and they can talk and it doesn’t matter what he says damage control comes later just words for now just sounds and—

‘It’s usually empty when I get back.’

‘Other people use the common room too. S’what makes it  _common.’_

‘I know that,’ and Merlin, Sirius, the worst bloody way to go about this is to be defensive but Remus won’t even lift his head, won’t look at him, and it makes him feel hot and angry and worthless and he hasn’t heard his voice in  _so long_ , not directed towards him, that quiet intensity and those deliberate, slow vowels and that barely-there Welsh lilt that you wouldn’t recognise unless you’d met Remus’ parents, which Sirius has. Has Remus told his parents? Do they hate him now? Do they mention him at dinner time, ‘that  _Black_ boy,’ and tut and shake their heads and curse in Welsh? His thoughts about Remus’ voice and Remus’ parents have been spiralling for longer than he realises and before he knows it it’s been a minute of dead silence and he figures Remus doesn’t plan to answer, it’s up to him.

‘What are you doing?’

Silly question, he already knows. There’s a textbook in Remus’ plaid lap (he’s in his pyjamas, a white t-shirt and plaid bottoms), Care of Magical Creatures, judging from the hinkypunk diagram Sirius can see upside down, and an essay in his hand that he’s proof-reading. Remus is the only person Sirius knows who bothers to proof-read his homework - apart from Evans maybe, if she’s got time. He doesn’t even make mistakes, he never does, but he proof-reads every time. Sirius used to tease him for that. He asks anyway, because sometimes you have to speak for the sake of making someone else answer you.

Doesn’t work: Remus tilts the book upwards slightly so Sirius can see the cover and then lays it back down and carries on. He still hasn’t looked up, and his honey-brown fringe obscures his face but Sirius already knows his expression is blank underneath. Unreadable, maybe solemn. It’s been that way ever since their lives switched to ‘ _after’_. At least it’s been that way when Sirius has been there to see it.

He’s not getting anywhere but he’s not going anywhere and it’s time to use a little of that Gryffindor bravery, prove he wasn’t put here by accident and he doesn’t actually belong in Slytherin like the rest of his twisted, insane family. Remus always used to be the first to reassure him that he’s nothing like them, but now Sirius isn’t so sure. He crosses over to the fire and sits in the armchair opposite Remus, and oh, fucking hell, if he’d just look up  _once._

Yeah, Sirius, like he owes you shit.

‘How are you?’ Sirius asks with inappropriate casualness, as if that’ll get him anywhere. There’s a non-committal  _‘hm,’_ from Remus, the best he’ll get. And try again.

‘Remus?’ He needs to stop saying things that don’t force him to answer, because it’s becoming clear that’s the only way he’ll get a significant response. Radio silence. Dead air. 

‘Would you..would you just talk to me, please? Don’t even..you don’t have to say anything. Please just listen to me for a few minutes.’ His voice comes out weaker, a little strained, a little desperate.

‘I’m not interested in hearing it.’ Remus speaks quietly, but it’s firm and resolute as anything and there’s a flint to it that turns Sirius’ stomach to ice. 

‘Just let me say something, and you can ignore me for the rest of your life.’ 

Sirius doesn’t mean it, when he says this. Not at all. It’s a bargaining tactic, a point-blank lie, nothing more. It’s not an option to let Remus ignore him for the rest of his life. It’s out of the question completely, but he lies to buy himself these few minutes in the hope that they’ll buy him forever.

Even worse, it works: Remus doesn’t close the book, but he looks up from it and blinks expectantly, permission is given. It’s the first time Sirius has seen Remus look at him since the week after That Night. He has the warmest brown eyes Sirius has ever seen, he’s always thought so – light in shade, like the caramel you can get from Honeydukes, but right now they’re amber, the brown reduced to little flecks here and there, the way they look the day before and a few days after the moon.

The moon. The moon was two days ago.

It’s the first one that’s been and gone without Sirius realising in four years. 

Sirius has a lunascope, he’d bought it the weekend Remus had come clean in their second year, but by their fourth he hadn’t even needed it. There’s only one moon phase he’s interested in keeping track of, and Remus himself is a walking moon chart in that respect. He wears an approaching full moon horribly: dark circles under amber eyes, a paler complexion and a jittery-ness that’s always accompanied by a fever and a headache brought on by the increased light sensitivity. Sirius reckons he knows the symptoms better than Madam Pomfrey does (he doesn’t – he always forgets the insomnia, just slips his mind).

He paid better attention to Remus’ symptoms than Remus did, to be honest. It used to be him who made sure Remus ate the day before, even when he didn’t want to. It was him who’d steer him back to the hospital wing when Remus had  _clearly_ been discharged too early and was trying to hide the fact that he was limping. It was him who noticed when the noise in the Great Hall was making Remus’ head pound, and who asked if he wanted to go and eat in the common room instead. He only hopes that James and Peter are looking out for him now Sirius can’t. Remus isn’t fragile, and he’d be hate to be thought of that way, but he’s terrible at taking care of himself, it’s just the truth.

The only time Remus looks iller than before a moon is after one, and this one must’ve chewed him up and spat him out properly bad, because he has the appearance of someone who runs the risk of fainting at any moment: pallid, peaky-looking. The edge of a bandage peeks out from under one of his shirt sleeves.

The first moon after That Night, a month later, Sirius had offered to come anyway. He’d argued that they didn’t need to talk to him, he just wanted to help keep Moony in check, help calm him down, as was his usual duty. Remus hadn’t spoken to him then, either, but James had passed on the message when he caught Sirius trying to follow them out of the castle: if Sirius dared to turn up, he’d be a dead man. Remus had no control over whether the wolf forgave him or not, so he wasn’t going to give it the option, and Sirius grudgingly understands how unfair it’d be to exploit that loss of control. The loss of control that he’d exploited when he’d done what he’d done, used Remus like a weapon. He didn’t offer to come on the next one, but he’d remembered when it was. He’d observed the full moon from his dorm,  _their_ dorm, surrounded by empty beds. Willed the moon to go easy on Remus. To be gentle, since he wasn’t.

They have to be worse without him there, they just have to, because Prongs alone must struggle against Moony and Wormtail is far too small to stop him hurting himself – one wrong move and he’d flatten him. They probably don’t even leave the shack, it’d surely be too dangerous. They have to be worse without him there, and it seems they are, because he’s looking at Remus now in the faint, stuttering orange glow of the fire and there’s a clear as anything new scar slicing his right eyebrow in half, it’s still red and irritated and it’ll be permanent. The facial scars were uncommon, but they always used to really get to Remus, more than the other ones. Despite that, it seems he’d rather endure them than endure Sirius. Sirius, on the other hand, has always found they contribute to the gentle sort of beauty that Remus doesn’t know he has.

Sirius doesn’t know how the full moons work, what makes the wolf choose to be angrier on some nights than it is on others, but something still tugs on his gut and tells him that it’s  _his_ fault that these recent ones seem to have been worse. When you’ve done something so terribly, incredibly wrong, Sirius is finding, and the blame is solely on you, blaming yourself for everything else becomes far easier, almost instinctive. It’s Sirius’ fault, now, when it Remus rips himself to shreds. It’s his fault when it rains, his fault when James misses a shot during a quidditch match, his fault when the bacon at breakfast is rubbery instead of crisp. He’s drunk on self-loathing, on self-pity. It helps, concentrating all these feelings into one dark little ball inside him, labelling them and explaining them. It helps, and hates himself even more for this - it’s a vicious cycle.

Well, he’s gotten this far, and the words aren’t coming. Sirius doesn’t know what to say that’ll change anything, he’s said it all before, he’s got nothing new. He’s not prepared, and the back of his throat is thick with apologies and his tongue feels clumsy in his mouth but he doesn’t know what to say, he leans forward in his armchair as if it’ll shake some words loose. He’s never had this problem before, he was raised to be loquacious (though only when spoken to).

After all, he had certainly had words on That Night.

_‘You think you know everything, Snivelly? Huh? Well, if you’re so fucking smart, why don’t you go prove it, hm? There’s a knot at the base of the willow that freezes the branches. Leads to a little tunnel, you see, and if you know everything, well why don’t you go see if you’re right? See if you run into Remus? Or are you a coward, Snivellous? Are you scared?’_

He’d spoken for ages on That Night, the words had flooded out before he’d even registered what they were. And the morning after, right into the afternoon, they’d trickled, until he realised his words were just bouncing off the water and coming right back to him. No one was hearing them.

He needs to say something quickly, because Remus’ patience is wearing thin, and honestly who can blame him?

‘How was the full?’

Remus sighs, and there’s a slight wince. Sirius always notices, Remus thinks he doesn’t.

‘Get on with it. Say what you want to say.’ He sounds like an exasperated teacher, Sirius is familiar with the tone.

Right, yes. Get on with it, Sirius.

‘I’m just…I’ve missed you so much. I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry, but you know that. These last few months have, have been..I know how terrible what I did was. I didn’t even  _think_ about the consequences for you, I didn’t even…I was just so  _angry_ , and the things he said about you, Moo—‘

‘Don’t call me that.’ It doesn’t even sound like Remus talking. He didn’t even see his lips move, just heard the words slice through his own. He can’t find the familiar Welsh in them, and it’s now that Sirius wishes Remus was the screaming, shouting, breaking-things type like he is. It’d be simpler and easier, and it would avoid the cold, dizzying sensation that comes with being on the receiving end of Remus’ deadly calm tone. It’s easier to measure the extent of someone’s anger when you can count it in the glass shards on the floor from a mirror they’ve hurled. Sirius finds comfort in physical destruction. The glass on the floor can’t remember. He just nods and rocks back in his chair a little. 

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t. The things he said though, he was being right shady, he had us figured out, he  _knew_ what you were, and he would’ve told  _everyone_ —‘

‘So your solution was to force me to kill him.’  


‘Well, no, I didn’t think that you’d..I didn’t think, never really considered that you’d  _kill_ him.’ 

‘But I would’ve. I would’ve murdered someone, because of you, you understand that, yes? I’d have to be responsible for his death for the rest of my life.’ 

‘But it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t have been your fault! It was my plan, and it wasn’t even really a plan, it just  _happened,_ in the moment, and I ‘spose I thought maybe you’d just..give him a right scare, maybe you’d bite him or something at the very worst, or best, I don’t know, and then he’d stop saying all of it, stop calling you a monster, because he’d  _also_ be a—‘

‘A monster?’ He’d been speaking quietly the whole time, but the words had been confident. This time, though, Remus’ voice is shakier, he doesn’t get it out in one go, so it’s more like ‘ _mons-te-er.’_ And Sirius knows he’s fucked up, oh Merlin, he didn’t mean it like that, but he’s just as good as called Remus a monster and now he wishes the flint was back in his voice because it’s a million, billion times better than this shakiness. 

‘No! No, no I didn’t mean it like that, I didn’t mean to say—‘

‘Yes you did.’  
(And he did).

Sirius is surprised when it isn’t him that speaks next. He stares at Remus so intently, carving out his image in case he never makes eye contact with him again. That’s not an option, of course, but it’s a possibility.

‘You said,’ and Remus is being careful with his words, taking his time, which Sirius should’ve done, ‘When it all came out in second-year, and I thought none of you would want to stick around with me, because I was a  _monster_ \- and I called myself that - you said you never wanted to hear me say that about myself ever again. I still thought it, a little, but I never said it again. I think maybe, if you hadn’t done what you’ve done, I might’ve stopped believing it all together. But now,’ Remus looks at the worn out old rug beneath them and the eye contact is broken, Sirius hopes he committed it to memory well enough.

‘Well now we’re back at square one, aren’t we? Because I used to think, how bad can I be? If James and Peter still stay with me, and Sirius actually wants to be  _with_ me, and they’ve sworn up and down that I’m not a monster, that I’m like everyone else, why can’t that be true? But now I know that you thought the same as I did, all this time. You still thought I was a monster, a  _thing,_ and don’t deny it, because you’ve just proved it yourself. I  _know_ what I am, but I thought that you saw…I didn’t think  _you_ thought about me the way I think about myself. The  _only_ person in this world that I couldn’t handle seeing me that way. The  _only_ one who I was  _so_ sure I could trust, because you’d never hurt me. You spent all that time pretending to give a shit about  _anything_ apart from yourself and this..this need you have to pretend to rebel when it’s really just cruelty _._ This shit you do, this isn’t rebellion. You aren’t making yourself less like  _them._ You would’ve let me  _kill_ him. And then you turned around and threw away  _everything_ I’d ever trusted you with because you hated Snape more than you ever cared about me, your childish fucking feud, and what better way to punish a person, what better way to  _ruin_ someone, than to turn them into what Remus is, your poor, pathetic monster friend. Because there can’t be a worse existence than that, right? That’s what you thought. That’s what you did.’

He doesn’t let Sirius answer yet, which is for the best, because Sirius doesn’t have answers. In fact, he’s not sure he has a tongue either, or a throat, or vocal chords, or lungs. He’s not quite sure his body is there at all; maybe he’s just a spirit, hovering where he had thought he was sitting, the vibrations of Remus’ words cutting through the space he doesn’t quite occupy. He can see tears building in Remus’ eyes, mingling with his bottom lashes, the light brown ones (he’s got the softest, longest eyelashes Sirius has ever seen on a boy) but Remus blinks them back, keeps his voice as steady as possible. Neither of them are fooled.

‘Would it have ended after his death? Is that where you would’ve drawn the line? You’ve never,  _never_ known when enough is enough, and it’s exhausting. This guilt that I’ve got to carry on your behalf because you’ve got no room for it is exhausting. How..how did you  _think_ I was going to react? Did you think I’d be happy? Genuinely? When you told me the next day,  _‘Oh you’ve bitten Snape! Pack your bags, you’ve been expelled, but you got him proper good!’_ Or did you even think about my reaction at all? No, God..why would you?’ A bitter little chuckle tumbles out, Remus cranes his neck back and stares at the ceiling, Sirius’ face is either red as anything or completely bloodless, he’s a little scared and he’s furious at himself for being so. He stares like an idiot while Remus runs a hand through his hair, seizing a tuft at the back as if to anchor himself to the conversation.

‘Because I suppose I was always  _easy_ , wasn’t I? You never needed to worry about me being angry. I’d always go along with whatever you and James dragged me into, and Peter would too. We were just sidekicks, and I..well, once you knew what I was, I wasn’t going anywhere, was I? I would’ve done whatever you told me to, would’ve done  _anything_ for you, I watched you bully Snape and didn’t say a word because I’m a coward and everybody knows it. And that was just in return for  _friendship._ Once you started kissing me, I suppose you could do what you wanted, couldn’t you? I couldn’t believe you could even bear to  _touch_ me, but I reckon you knew that. Reckon that’s why you did it. ‘ _Pathetic little werewolf Remus, oh he’ll follow you around forever if you say you’re his friend, who knows what he’ll let you do if you start making out with hi—‘’_

‘Sack it. That’s not true, that’s not fair, it wasn’t like that. Not ever,’ and Sirius’ voice is stronger than he thought he’d manage, considering he feels like he’s about to be sick, because how much of what Remus is saying is false? He  _didn’t_ think about what would happen to Remus if Snape went down to the willow, didn’t think about Remus at all. He just thought about the werewolf, what it’d sort out for him. Even the next day, when he had to be the one to explain to Remus what had happened, while Remus was  _still in the hospital_ , no less, his thoughts had all been a terrible loop of  _what’s going to happen to me what’s he going to say to me is he still going to want me, me, me._

‘It wasn’t?’ Remus asks, but he’s not  _asking,_ not really. There’s a venom to the question that Sirius didn’t think him capable of. ‘Have you heard of the Committee for the Disposal of Danger Creatures?’ And this one probably  _is_ a question, so Sirius shakes his head no, though he’s certain he knows where this is going. Remus leans forward, he’s almost smiling.

‘Well, if your brilliant little joke had been successful, Sirius,’ it’s the first time he’s heard Remus say his name in months and  _Merlin_ he’s missed it, even in these circumstances it’s like electricity tightening his chest, and he hates his name and the way it reminds him of his family but in Remus’ voice with that little twang it’s his favourite sound ever, it’s his favourite song, and that’s saying something because he has more records than he’s got blood cells and Remus bought half of them for him and he’s forgetting to listen,  _fuck_ , what’s Remus saying?

‘—kill me. They’d have  _put me down._ Just so you could win a battle in this idiotic war you and James wage against Snape. 

‘And that’s the really funny thing, Sirius. I’m  _not_ the dangerous one here. I’m a fucking werewolf, and I’m still not the  _fucking_ dangerous one here. That’s you, Sirius. You’re the dangerous one, because you fucking choose to be, again and again, and to hell with the rest of us. To hell with  _us._ We’re all just a part of your big  _fuck you_ to the world, and, and to your parents and your family and everything that’s gone wrong for you. I’m sorry that you’ve been through what you’ve been through. I’m so, so sorry that you’ve got this shitty life and these shitty parents and I wish I could change that for you but I can’t. And the fact that you’ve been hurt doesn’t mean the rest of us are just collateral damage. Doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences.’

He’s right, and it’s terrifying. Sirius doesn’t want to hear anymore, and he reckons if Remus keeps talking then he’ll make himself even angrier and then he’ll really never forgive him. Because he’s right, and he knows it, and it’s terrifying. Remus has closed his book now, he’s watching Sirius, who looks down at his hands and their chipped black nail polish. It’s messy on his right hand, spilling onto his cuticles, because he did them himself where Remus used to do his right hand for him. He swallows thickly. There’s no plan.

‘I..what I did was the  _stupidest_ thing, the most cruel thing I’ve ever done, Remus, and I’m so, so sorry and you don’t  _ever_ have to forgive me fully, I know things can probably never be the way they were and that’s my fault, that’s what I deserve.’ He stops speaking to his hands and fixes his gaze back up on Remus. ‘And you’re right, I think..I think there’s a part of me that enjoys having people be scared of me, enjoys fear, and I don’t know why I’m like this. Its always been there, and I don’t want it. But I need you to know, and it might not change anything, okay, but I need you to know that I was  _never_ with you because I..because I thought it’d let me get away with stuff. I loved you, and I still do, and it sounds so stupid, I know, but it’s..it’s whatever you want. I just can’t keep going like this, so I’m just asking you, and I’ve  _no right,_ I know that, but I have to be selfish one more time and ask you to just  _talk_ —‘ his voice betrays him and it’s game over, ‘ _tau-aughk’,_ the second part is mangled in a sob that sends warm tears down his face, tickling his cheeks, and he can’t tell how Remus is reacting because he’s just a big person-shaped blur behind the tears, some of which are slipping into the corners of Sirius’ mouth and he can taste salt. He probably looks so pathetic, but none of that matters now.

‘Just let me talk to you, just..let me fix it, one more chance. I know you hate me, you deserve to hate me, but just let me stick around, somewhere. Even if..even if I can’t, we can’t be like we were, if we’re only ever something small and slow and quiet, even if you’d just  _look_ at me, then maybe one day..’  


‘I want to stop hurting people, Remus.’

His mouth is still open, but he has nothing left to say. He blinks a few times and releases the tears that have built up, his vision clears. Remus is crying too, but it’s more dignified, it’s silent – you wouldn’t even know except for the way the fire-glow bounces off the wet tracks on his cheeks. At certain points, it looks like he’s crying gold. He’s probably so tired, Sirius thinks, he deserves to go and have a good night’s sleep, but Sirius is too selfish to let him have it yet.

‘Why did you have to do something so _stupid_ , Sirius? Why..why did you have to ruin _everything?’_ Sirius isn’t imagining it, Remus’ voice is definitely cracking too, and his shoulders are shuddering. He wants to go and hug him more than he’s ever wanted to do anything, but that’s a thing of the past, now. That’s a game for children. That’s so much less and so much more than where they are right now. The only pulse he picks up is his own.

‘I don’t know.’  
(And he doesn’t).

‘And even now, I can’t hate you, you know that? It should be the easiest thing I’ve ever done. But I can’t, because I’ve always been a coward. And it just makes me angrier, and missing you just makes me angrier. I’m so _angry_ with you, Sirius.’

It’s completely the wrong time to say it, Sirius knows. It’s inappropriate and it’s unfair, it’ll put Remus in a difficult position, it might well hurt him. But haven’t they already established that Sirius is not a good person? Not yet, anyway. He’s going to be, from here on out, but he just needs to do one last bad thing. There’s an exhale, is it him or the corpse? Doesn’t matter now, because Remus _misses_ him. He’s angry, of course he’s angry, maybe he’ll be angry forever, but if so then what’s stopping him from saying it? There’s nothing to lose, Sirius has _nothing_ , he’s at the top of the Astronomy tower, and he’ll jump or he won’t. He’ll live or he won’t, he’ll drown or he won’t. Really, his life has never been simpler. Remus misses Sirius, Sirius misses Remus, nothing else should matter (though he knows, now, that it does). If his mind is made up, it’s made up, but if it’s not?

There’s a heartbeat, a pulse, a steady hot thrum of blood that rushes in his ears. There’s silence between them, but he can’t hear it over the rhythm. He’s staring at Remus, isn’t he? The thumping is too loud, he can’t see him. His pulse or the corpse’s? The _after_ or the _before?_ It’s not dead, it’s not dead, it’s not dead.

He knows it’s only his heartbeat, it’s echo. Anatomical, literal, constant. He knows that for the last few months it’s still been there, always been there, so this isn’t a sign. Just like the sun rising isn’t a sign, just like his eyes opening when he wakes isn’t a sign, tells himself Remus _missing_ him isn’t a sign. Be smart Sirius, for once. Stop hurting people.

He says it anyway, because he isn’t a good person, not yet.

‘I love you, Remus.’  
(And he does).  
‘I know you do.’

And he _knows_ , and that’s so much more than Sirius dared hope for, and that’s a foot in the door, right? How can it not be? He’s still a million miles away, on the armchair opposite, but Sirius is willing to walk that far. Remus sighs.

‘I’m going to need time.’  
‘I know.’

Well, he can have time. Sirius will wait, he’ll wait as long as he needs to, as long as he knows there’s something to wait for. They’re sixteen, and they’ve got time, and they think they know what love is (but they don’t yet, not really). It’s nineteen-seventy-seven, and they’ve got time. All the time in the world, the rest of their lives, and that just might be enough, and Sirius is swimming upwards.

It’s nineteen-seventy-seven, and Remus and Sirius have got time.

**Author's Note:**

> if you stuck around till the end..thank u!! never posted anything I’ve written before, so I hope it wasn’t..too awful?? I’ll get better at it, I swear. I appreciate feedback, tho I doubt anyone will see this!  
> -ridi


End file.
